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Sex, lies, and baseball. A perfect mix for voyeurs and other lemmings.
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Not news: An athlete cheating on his wife.
The current story about ESPN analyst Steve Phillips making the rounds is a prime example of what’s truly wrong with this society, and how web sites purporting to report news and instead dealing in little more than salacious gossip pollute the Internet like so much toxic waste.
It’s not about what Phillips did.
Rather about the hysteria in following a story where one thing is inescapably apparent to anyone with a single brain cell firing.
This is not legitimate news worth covering past a one-time notice and nothing more.
This is not something any legitimate news outlet should spend one millisecond digging into, now that the initial story has been noted and documented.
This is absolutely nothing legitimate to waste a single syllable on past this initial reporting.
And therein lies the one word we need to focus on.
Legitimate.
Phillips has been forced to take a leave of absence from ESPN after allegations of having an affair with a much younger female network employee has come to public life. This is not the first time an ESPN baseball analyst has apparently been playing in the company pool, as we learned in the Harold Reynolds incident, subsequent firing and settling of the inevitable lawsuit.
Let’s take a step back here for a moment and break this down to its simplest form, shall we?
This is a story reaching hysterical proportions on a number of web sites carrying with them the tag of being very questionable when it comes to any real journalistic reporting skills. Yet are often taken as bible by more than a few people who disregard facts and checking sources as a necessary part of the reporting process. Most notably these web sites exist for little more than seeking to gloat over the more established and reputable networks. Fabricating and commenting on stories and links used to plumb the depths of rumor, innuendo and personal attacks. Or because they have an ax to grind with ESPN and play childish games.
This is a story focusing on a former baseball player who talks about baseball on a cable sports network.
A former jock tossing out his opinions on the sport he played. On a cable network.
In it’s basic form, we are talking about two consenting co-working adults having sex. A married man who apparently decided to take advantage of a situation and make a personal mess of his life and marriage. A television personality who apparently has a penchant for cheating on his wife and is too stupid to realize the consequences. A single adult woman who, according to reports, is something just this side of unhinged.
Scandalous? Perhaps. Wrong? No doubt. Juicy gossip for web sites and fake sports “journalists” who revel in the number of hits they get every time the word “sex” is mentioned in a story, no matter how insignificant it is? Absolutely.
News? Worthy of any serious coverage or discussion among those who lead meaningful lives?
Please.
If indeed Phillips dallied about with a female employee, he will and apparently has been punished by ESPN, which is in effect the Walt Disney Corporation. If he’s broken corporate policy that demands his termination, so be it. If he has done irreparable harm to his broadcast career for failing to keep his pants zipped and no one wants to take another chance on him, it’s a bed he has made all by himself.
Go ahead and use all the hyperbole you want. Call him a “slimy cad” who “took advantage of a young woman” and may have “ruined his marriage and insulted his wife”. Bring up those similar issues he had while with the NY Mets. Drag the Harold Reynolds case into this and ask about a lack of consistency within ESPN.
But it’s not “breaking news”. It’s not important news. To a point, it’s barely news at all.
When Phillips was fired as GM of the NY Mets for making moves deemed ineffective by ownership and was involved in a sexual harassment case, this was news because it dealt with a powerful man in charge of a powerful company. A company overseen by another more powerful entity that has governmental concerns about items such as anti-trust exemptions. An organization that sells tickets at often inflated prices to men, women and their children promising family entertainment. And his actions stained his employer and, to a lesser extent, the game itself. A game that has a history of dealing with sexual harassment issues.
This is about a guy talking baseball on a cable network.
What is even more preposterous and sad is when more than one person I’ve spoken with and passed e-mails with has decided to make this a political issue and bring Bill Clinton’s sexual dalliances into the argument, comparing the two as similar news items and worthy of the same coverage.
Whether you believe Clinton was rightly mocked or was the victim of a witch-hunt is not the issue here, nor is there any shred of connection between the two.
Clinton was the leader of the free world. Everything a President does is open to scrutiny because at the end of the day it could affect the life of every single American. Perhaps every single person around the globe. That goes for every single President of the United States, and bringing their sometimes inane and questionable actions under the microscope is indeed news.
Steve Phillips only has an effect on baseball fans desperate to know why a manager pulled a pitcher too early in the game. Or in running what some disgruntled Mets fans believe is a vendetta against the team that sacked him.
By the way, I am neither an employee of ESPN, an apologist for their network, a Disney stockholder, a close friend of Phillips, his wife, children, pet or otherwise.
Merely someone who sees another instance of what passes for news reporting as little more than dumbed down pabulum for the masses. Pabulum rightly defined as “insipid intellectual nourishment”.
A veteran journalist who hopes to, and will strive to, leave this story behind following the close of this column. Who views this as little more than gossip fodder unless there are serious laws broken.
And who has three words for anyone who really thinks this is news worth talking about for one second past this column.
Get a life.
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